Capital Ring Day 5 and Thames Path Extension (15 July 2007) - Part 1

Hackney Wick to North Woolwich (“official” Ring sections 14 and 15), plus Woolwich to Erith (Thames Path Extension)

Distance: 15.6 miles (8 miles on the Capital Ring, 7 miles on the Thames Path Extension, plus 0.6 miles of station links)
Ascent: 178m
Walkers: Anth & Jim, plus Dave for the second half

How hard is it to walk?
I’m not sure it could actually be any easier, but the preponderance of concrete and tarmac underfoot may tire your feet somewhat

Introduction

Our exertions on our previous visit to the Ring meant that we had a mere 8 miles left of the Ring to go in order to complete our third Long Distance Path (following the LOOP and the Ridgeway). We would have time, as I had hoped, to complete the Thames Path Extension afterwards, which at a mere twelve miles in total (of which we had just 7 miles left to do) could not really be counted as a fourth LDP. It would, however, achieve my aim of linking the Ring to the LOOP.

It was cloudy but very muggy as we made our way across London to Hackney Wick. As usual, Dave would join us half way through whilst Cat and Jus had made some feeble excuse for their absence.

(a) Capital Ring - Hackney Wick to Beckton Park

Hackney Wick station was heaving – it seemed that the trains onwards had been cancelled due to engineering works, and all passengers were disembarking here for replacement bus services. We weaved our way through the crowds, my early-morning shorts attracting several raised eyebrows, and headed back through the sinister streets of Hackney to rejoin the Ring at the Lee Navigation.

Things had changed dramatically here since our last walk a couple of months before. The road bridge over the Lee had been closed off, and burly workmen were busy hauling concrete blocks and high blue barricades into position. We were entering the area allocated for the largest urban regeneration programme in Europe – the London 2012 Olympics. At present the main activity seemed to be putting up these huge blue fences, but I’m sure that eventually they’ll get around to doing the stadium and racetrack and all the other necessary paraphernalia. We were a little worried that the Ring may have been closed off. However, we soon saw that a gap had been left down the side of the barricades to allow Ring walkers to cross the bridge and rejoin the trail – I’m not sure how long this state of affairs will continue though, so it’s be a good idea to check before walking this section in future.

We descended to rejoin the towpath where we had left it. You may remember that at the end of day 3 we’d grown heartily sick of the Lee Navigation (in my write up I used the words “bleak” and “interminable”). We were therefore not really looking forward to the first part of the walk today, which continued along the Lee for a further half a mile. However, whether it was due to us no longer being weary, the weather not being quite so grey, or because we now had low expectations, this final part of the Lee turned out to be quite enjoyable.

More of the double-headed graffiti crocodiles were sprayed on walls on the far side of the canal; today they seemed to flash us cheerful grins rather than the menacing snarls of two months previously. Where the Hertford Union Canal joined on the opposite bank, many new apartment blocks were sprouting – no doubt seeded by rising property values in the area following the winning of the Olympic bid. One particular block tapered off to a ridiculously thin point, which must make furniture purchasing for the inhabitants well nigh impossible.

On our bank all we had was a grand view of the Olympic blue construction fences, but we were just relieved that they had been built back from the bank and had not forced the ring to divert onto roads. There was one point when they veered away from the bank to encircle a large house that was clearly going to escape redevelopment. In the garden of the house was a large circular swimming pool, bounded on the far side by a high wall with a tropical mural on it. The near side was open to allow views out over the canal – unfortunately this also meant that people walking the towpath could peer in. According to the Guide, this house used to be where Channel 4’s Big Breakfast was filmed – having only watched it sporadically, I could not confirm if this was true from memory. It was now clearly in private hands, with sturdy electronic locks on the gates.

We soon left the Lee to join the Greenway, a pathway on top of the NOSE. You didn’t mishear me – it stands for the Northern Outfall Sewage Embankment, a huge linear earth mound built to hide a series of sewage pipes. The NOSE runs for six miles taking sewage to the Thames (don’t worry, it gets treated on the way). The Ring would follow the NOSE for some three miles or so, with grand views of the Canary Wharf development dominating the scene to our left.

We thought that this part of the trail might be a bit dull, but at first it felt rather grand to be on the only raised feature in one of the flattest parts of the capital. We had views over the omnipresent blue fences across the Olympic redevelopment site – acres of disused warehouses, ruinous factories and crumbling tower blocks. Whatever your view on the Olympics being held in London, surely anything has to be an improvement on this mess. Although I’d heard on the news that many of the local businesses had been against the Olympics, all the nearby buildings were still proudly displaying “Back the Bid” banners – no doubt the possible proceeds of compulsory purchase may have swing the owners in favour!

All around us men in fluorescent jackets were busy, either erecting further blue fences or surveying (possibly for even more fences – we had a sneaking suspicion that come 2012 the stadium itself would be built out of blue fences). We had to suffer the embarrassment of passing one group of them twice, after missing the point at which the Ring briefly left the NOSE to pass under the Docklands Light Railway at Pudding Mill Lane station (only on the DLR do you get station names like this!

We started to cross a series of tidal channels, all part of the River Lea, which here is split into many parts (if you’ve spotted that I’ve changed the spelling, it’s deliberate - apparently you’re meant to use “Lee” for the man-made channels, and “Lea for the “natural” ones). As the tide was out, they were mainly construed of stinking, litter-strewn mud – you felt you might be infected with ghastly diseases just by breathing the air above them.

Just before the final one of four such unfortunate channels, we came across the third of the stunning Victorian pumping stations on the Ring – Abbey Mills, affectionately known as “The Temple of Sewage”. This one was in the guise of some kind of Russian church – once again it was impossible to believe that a utility company had built it. It had, unfortunately, now been replaced by a modern and far more utilitarian building, and the old building seemed to have been left to decay – the paving in front of it was becoming choked with weeds. Soon after the Temple, we were unable to determine if a giant metal spiral amongst weeds to our right was a bit of abandoned industrial detritus or a modern art installation (our inability to tell does say a lot about modern art!). If it was art, others had sought to add an even more modern twist, with the application of liberal graffiti. There was certainly nothing artistic about the graffiti – these mindless squiggles of morons would probably disgust Banksy.

We were now free of the stinking creeks, but as we approached Plaistow we started to smell a new and more noxious scent. It seemed to come at us in waves. At first I thought Jim had been eating baked beans again, but we soon traced the source to a series of partially obscured vents in the NOSE. Clearly, what we were smelling was the raw sewage passing beneath us, and we realised that amusing acronyms were not the only reason behind the name of this embankment. No doubt the fragrance was enhanced by what was becoming a very warm day, but nevertheless we wondered how the occupants of the houses backing onto the NOSE put up with it – personally I would be worried that it was a health risk.

It was with some urgency that we marched along the remainder of the NOSE – frankly there wasn’t much to see on the rest of it anyway. I carefully kept my eye out for the point at which the Ring turned off, as I didn’t want to stay in the stench any longer than necessary. I still felt like I needed a shower to rid myself of the smell as we descended into a terraced housing estate where all the estate agent’s signs were advertising an event at the local school in an all-too-rare rare show of community spirit.

From the box girder footbridge over the A13 we could see some low hills to the west – the only hills for miles around. Known somewhat optimistically as the “Beckton Alps”, they’re actually slag heaps from a gasworks. We headed down a dubious-looking road on the far side of the A13, bounded on one side by a heavily fortified industrial unit. The spike-topped metal fences at the front were obviously just for show, as at the back the degenerated into low, gently decomposing wooden affairs.

(b) Capital Ring - Beckton Park to Woolwich

It was with relief that we entered Beckton Park, a very pleasant change of scenery after the miles of continuous run-down conurbation we’d traversed on the NOSE. And let’s face it, we need to enjoy green spaces as much as we can whilst we still have them, given Gordon Brown’s apparent wish to concrete over the whole of Britain with his 3 million new houses. He’s obviously realised that the inner cities tend to vote for Labour, so by turning the entire country into one giant inner city, he will be able to remain in power forever. But here’s an idea – why not act proactively instead of reactively? Instead of destroying our countryside, why not reduce the need for housing – curb population growth by balancing immigration and emigration against current birth and death rates. Change social policy to discourage divorce and family break-up, and reduce the number of youngsters leaving home early. This might also help reduce other social problems, such as high crime (or “anti-social behave, as it’s now been downgraded to), which (despite government denials) do genuinely seem to be linked to broken homes and high-density housing.

As we entered the park, I ceased my increasingly belligerent rant for fear of scaring the ducks. Beckton Park does of course feature the lake that seems to be a legal requirement of all London parks. The Ring runs past one of those torture trails, I mean trim trails, so we were glad to divert away from it and walk along the lakeside instead (to be quite honest, this would make a much more pleasant route for the Ring). The lake is a little more natural looking than most park lakes, with reeds and a small island. This seemed to have scared off the “ornamental” ducks, and we were left with the classic British quartet of coot, mallard, Canada goose and mute swan.

The rest of this part of Beckton Park seemed to be your classic municipal park, with playground, café and toilets. Avoiding a tree trail, we crossed a road into the next part of Beckton Park (Beckton Park as a whole is rather large, but divided into several component bits). This second part had a wilder appearance to it and was rather pleasant, with a path winding between small areas of scrubby woodland. One area had been set aside for the growth of a wildflower meadow. Nature seemed to resent being governed in this way, for there were few flower species in the designated area, whilst the nearby woodland verges were a riot of wildflower colours.

Coming to a road, we passed more toilets and another café, set near the edge of a wide expanse of cut grass. The Ring headed straight across the middle of the grass, beside what appeared to be a very narrow gallop for horses. An apparently ownerless lone horse was tied incongruously to the gallop rails, about halfway along, and we wondered who’d left him there.

We wandered around the edge of a couple more open grassy areas; in the first kites were being flown, whilst in the second we joined young footballers in weaving our way through lines of miniature cones. It seemed a long time since we had passed Beckton Park pond – this was one of the most spread-out parks we’d seen! Frankly, it was high time for a change, and we were about to cross into one of the most changed parts of the capital, in Docklands.

We knew immediately that we were in Docklands by the complete absence of any traffic on a road system that (uniquely in Britain) is currently overspecified for the buildings constructed so far (although as Brown squeezes in more of his proposed 3 million new homes, I’m sure it’ll soon be as congested as the rest of the country. That said, Docklands does also feature superb transport links in the form of the Docklands Light Railway. We crossed a branch of the railway on a suspension bridge over Cyprus station so that we could briefly explore the University of East London, as recommended by the guidebook.

The university has an imposing entrance. The bridge leads you directly beneath a wide red building with uplifted ends, looking one part Chinese architecture and two parts evil red transformer robot head. We climbed somewhat nervously up to a courtyard, which had the slightly forlorn feel that all universities have outside of term time. The surreality of the entrance path was reinforced by a disturbing sculpture that dominated the courtyard. This giant pink blob looked like a cross between the Monty Python foot, and melted male genitalia; I felt that the artist must have been something of a messed up individual. It certainly provoked a reaction, which seems to be the main aim of modern art. My personal reaction was one of revulsion, which gave me a good opportunity to examine the rest of the small campus.

All of the buildings here are built in the same twisted school of architecture that we’d seen in the entrance block; violently coloured with the roofs inside-out (ie lowest part in the middle, and highest part at the edge). The halls of residence were round, which must have been a challenge to furnish. The location was impressive, with the courtyard overlooking the huge Royal Albert Dock to the London City Airport on the far side. It’s certainly a unique campus, but I’m not sure it’s one I’d like to learn in!

Eventually, so ‘tis rumoured, the Ring will be diverted to run alongside the Dock, but for the moment we were forced to return via the bridge and follow liberally sprinkled trail signs through houses and a narrow park. We could see that the Docklands redevelopment has not (so far) spread too far away from the docksides – a glimpse down side streets revealed much older and rather decrepit housing and warehouses, all patiently waiting for the builders to move in. At one point we passed the shamefully boarded-up and vandalised Ferndale pub – I imagine that the seeming absence of any inhabitants in Docklands may have contributed to its demise.

A large roundabout had another old pumping station in the centre – this one appeared to have been based on the Pantheon in Rome, but was not nearly as impressive as the church-, castle- and mosque-style ones seen earlier in the Ring. Its muted countenance was a distinct contrast to the brutal modern Docklands warehouse behind, which seemed to have been made out of giant red, orange and grey Lego blocks.

The Ring will eventually head directly down to the Thames from here, past yet another Docklands railway station with an intriguing name – Gallions Reach. At present its future route is blocked by a huge new development. As well as the usual artists impressions, the information boards had an overhead image of the docklands area, showing how close the new development would be to the Olympics, station, airport, and suchlike. What the view also unwittingly illustrated was the huge line of vacant plots lined up to be the “next big thing” in Docklands.

For the time being, the Ring takes a temporary route via the A112 (which, unusually for the area, had a couple of cars on it). This was fine by us though, as we were rather enjoying all the unusual architecture and felt that Docklands might actually be better appreciated from the road than the river. Off to the left of the road a series of newly built apartment blocks seemed to be floating on the waters of the Gallions Point Marina. Despite this, and their oval shape, we were disappointed that they lacked the vibrant colour scheme of nearby buildings, creating something of a disharmony. To the right the view was rather spectacular. A plane coming in over our heads followed landing lights drawing our eyes along the vast expanse (yet still tiny by modern airport standards) of the runway of London City Airport, towards the Millennium Dome and Canary Wharf in the distance.

The road here was carried on the long Sir Stephen Redgrave Bridge, which provided a nice link to home for me – I live only a couple of miles from the great Olympian. At the end of the bridge we turned off into a rather chaste development; an almost “normal” development of relatively short apartment blocks in a subdued cream stone effect. At the centre was a small and deserted cluster of shops including a café, a hairdressers and an estate agents. A quick look in the estate agents revealed that, despite all the horror stories about London property prices, they weren’t actually too bad – we saw a 3-bedroom apartment with balcony and 180 degree Thames views for £285,000. Equivalent flats in overlooking the Kennet in Reading have been going for up to £500,000 in recent years. Considering the lack of people in Docklands, and the huge number of new buildings going up, we surmised that there must be an oversupply of properties on the market causing the relatively low prices. Alternatively it might just be that Docklands seems so devoid of anything to do or anywhere to go that people are just not interested in moving there.

As we came to the Thames, a series of seven apartment blocks of varying height on the far side of the river looked strangely like stop-motion photographs of an explosives detonator being depressed. We turned right along the embankment, passing more new blocks of flats whose ground floor windows were partially obscured by the huge concrete flood defences – not an appealing view, and one that will become even further restricted as the flood defences are raised with global warming. On the river, a beautiful schooner slipped gently past, a vision of a time long gone by.

The Docklands flats suddenly gave way to Royal Victoria Gardens, and a few minutes later we were back in North Woolwich, on the road to the Woolwich Ferry at the point where we had first joined the Ring. We had meant to triumphantly finish the Ring with a crossing on the Woolwich Ferry, but in our heart of hearts we knew that we’d completed it now. It was rather an anticlimactic feeling, not just because of the location, but also because it didn’t feel like the end of a trail – we could simply carry on for a second lap of the Ring. Also, we weren’t finishing for the day here – we were carrying on to complete the Thames Path Extension as well.

Despite the ending, we had enjoyed the Capital Ring immensely – Jim even said reckoned it was the best long distance path we’d completed to date (above the LOOP and the Ridgeway). It is just so varied, and there are things to see on every corner. The only downside is how hard it is underfoot, with most of the trail on either tarmac or concrete. The highlights were without doubt Crystal Palace Park and Abney Park Cemetery, along with seeing green parakeets in the wild for the first time. The official symbol of the Ring is Big Ben, but this seemed inappropriate as we had not seen it at all on the Ring. We had considered making the parakeet our unofficial symbol, but had disappointingly not seen a single one north of the river. We felt therefore that the playground should be the symbol for the trail as we’d seen so many of them – maybe they could change the trail name to the Capital Roundabout!

We met Dave near the embarkation point for the Woolwich Ferry. The ferry is a remarkable institution. A ferry has operated here since the 14th Century, and has been free since 1889. It is licensed for up to 500 people and 200 tonnes of vehicles, and so we were astonished to find an Asian fellow making repeated attempts to push past us and get to the head of the queue of 50. Needless to say we didn’t allow this uncouth chap passage. When the half-hourly ferry arrived (we had to wait 15 minutes) we found the passenger deck to be simply cavernous, to the extent that the 50 or so passengers were lost in it. We felt that if the discourteous person was in such a hurry, he should have used the free foot tunnel just a short distance downstream, rather than unnecessarily jostling us. The ferry was fairly unpleasant, decorated in institutional green and with no comforts whatsoever – we were quite glad when short journey was over. Nevertheless, it’s a big shame that the venerable ferry is due to be closed down and replaced by the Thames Gateway Bridge in 2003.

A member of the crew helped us to find the right exit (there are 4, but only one is used at a time. We stepped out onto the quayside, and onto our second long distance path of the day – the Thames Path Extension.... Continued